Due to ageing populations in many regions of the world, there is an increasing use of incontinence garments. Changing of incontinence garments such as diapers when they become saturated with urine, or fouled due to excrement—stools or faeces, is a basic aspect of health care for incontinent patients. It is important to know when it is necessary to change the diaper: on the one hand, changing diapers more often than is necessary is expensive and wasteful of diaper materials and care-worker effort, and overly intrusive and disruptive; on the other hand if a diaper is not changed at an appropriate time, there is a significant risk of skin irritation which may lead to the requirement for further medical intervention and treatment which may take several weeks, and be more disruptive and expensive. Additionally, by providing timely alerts, leakage resulting in soiled bed linen and clothing can be avoided resulting in savings in labour and expenses.
Odour or touch may be used to detect the fouling of a diaper; in all but the worst cases this may require close inspection: whereas with infants, this may be acceptable, with adult and elderly patients it may be considered to be intrusive. It would therefore be desirable to provide automated systems for providing an appropriate alert when a diaper is required to be changed.
Recently, it has been proposed to incorporate electronics into incontinence garments, so as to determine when the garment becomes wet or soiled, to produce so-called “smart-diapers” and the like. For example U.S. patent application publication number US2008/0262453 discloses a remote monitoring diaper system, kits and method of using the same, which includes a remotely placed monitor station in communication with a diaper device. The diaper device has electronic components that are configured to detect an increase in conductivity across opposing detector electrodes, which increase can then be used to indicate, via an EMF signal, that the diaper device is wet.
Incontinence garments, particularly for the elderly are conventionally “long-shelf-life” articles, in that they are often manufactured and supplied in bought in bulk quantities to the user such as a care home, and may not be used for months or even years. For smart diapers and other incontinence garments incorporating electronics, this introduces a potential risk that the power supply for the electronics may deteriorate between manufacture of the garment and use of the electronics to detect soiling or the like.